Step 4: Encrypting e-mail in WinPT

Step 4: Encrypting e-mail in WinPT

Encrypting or signing e-mail with WinPT is fairly easy:

  1. Open a window in your e-mail client and compose the e-mail.
  2. Make sure no text is selected in the e-mail.
  3. Right-click on the WinPT icon in the system tray and select Current Window | Sign or Sign and Encrypt.
  4. If you're prompted to choose a key, select a key to sign/encrypt with from the list that appears. You'll probably also need to type the secure passphrase you used to secure your key.
  5. If you are encrypting this message to be read by a specific person, choose that person's public key, not your own, as the encryption key. Your own key will be used to sign the message if you're doing that.
  6. The text in the message window will be replaced by a block that begins with the phrase -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- and ends with -----END PGP MESSAGE-----
  7. Do not edit anything between those two lines! If you do, the message will be damaged.
  8. Send the e-mail as you would normally do. In order to verify the signature or decode the message, the person at the other end must be running WinPT (or GnuPG, or another program that works with public/private keys) as well.

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Simple e-mail encryption

 Home: Introduction
 Step 1: Outlook's S/MIME
 Step 2: Public keypairs
 Step 3: GnuPG and WinPT: Setup
 Step 4: Encrypting e-mail in WinPT
 Step 5: Verifying signed e-mail in WinPT
 Step 6: Extras: Symmetric encryption and hotkey commands

More information from SearchWindowsSecurity.com

  • Whitepaper: Contributing to regulatory compliance with e-mail encryption
  • Opinion: How much encryption is enough?

    • ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
    Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Power Users Newsletter. Check it out for the latest advice and musings on the world of Windows network administrators -- and please share your thoughts as well! Copyright 2005 TechTarget

    This was first published in November 2005